McCaskill: Senate with majority of women will mean better government

WASHINGTON – Women will one day outnumber men in the Senate and when that happens, government will work better, Sen. Claire McCaskill said Wednesday.

And if women want to succeed in politics, they need to get over the “disease to appease” and be hyper strategic, the Missouri Democrat told a crowd of about 150 students at George Washington University. One thing they don’t have to do? Give up plans to have a family.

“I have not been a perfect mother, but the notion that you cannot do this job and be a mother is just BS,” McCaskill said.

She made her remarks at the latest stop on a whirlwind tour to promote her book, “Plenty Ladylike,” which has taken her from Springfield to New York to Los Angeles. Along the way, she’s soaked up the media spotlight, snagging write-ups in Time, Glamour and New York Magazine, and appearances on CNN, MSNBC, and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.

For many politicians, an autobiography offers a chance to look back on a long career — or test the waters for higher office. But McCaskill isn’t hanging up her hat yet, or throwing it into a bigger ring.

“To the extent that (the book) gives me a bigger megaphone, that’s a bonus,” McCaskill said in an interview as she signed books at Wednesday’s event. “But it really wasn’t the intention.”

Her chief goal in writing the book, she said, was to convince women it’s good to be aggressive, ambitious, and calculating. She wants more women to get “comfortable with the rough and ugly side of modern political campaigns” and be willing “to fight in the no-holds-barred races that will give them their fair share of power in our democracy,” as she told USA TODAY in August.

She reiterated that message on Wednesday to a politically engaged audience, with students asking questions about everything from the Iran nuclear deal to how women can break down gender barriers.

“Own your ambitions, own your intellect, and push as hard as you know how,” McCaskill told the university crowd. And for those young women wanting to run for office, “call me,” she offered, telling them she’d dole out political advice and maybe even money.

Wednesday’s event was moderated by one of McCaskill’s colleagues, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. The questions from him and the audience were almost uniformly friendly, except for one asking McCaskill to explain why she said Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, couldn’t win the presidency. Sanders is challenging former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, and McCaskill has endorsed Clinton.

McCaskill noted that Sanders calls himself a Democratic socialist, a label that she said makes him unelectable.

“It’s a political reality that Bernie Sanders faces,” she said. “I come from a state where they hate Barack Obama because they think he’s a socialist — and he isn’t one.”

Booker asked McCaskill which Cabinet post she would be interested in if she had to leave the Senate and take a job in a possible Clinton administration.

McCaskill said she wouldn’t want any such job, but she answered the question anyway.

“If I had to leave the Senate … probably attorney general,” she said, but quickly added, “I’m not going into Hillary Clinton’s Cabinet, I promise.”